September 6, 2016 | POV’s daily list of essential reading for the documentary and independent filmmaking community.
First Trailer for Oasis Documentary Supersonic Unveiled
The first trailer for Supersonic has been unveiled, a film which documents the career of Oasis. The film is produced by the team behind Amy and follows the brothers through their childhood as “head cases” to their ascent as “one of rock’s true giants.”
Read more | The Guardian »
Should Documentary Films Have Footnotes?
NUTS! filmmaker Penny Lanes shares, “about a year or so ago I began to think about footnotes. First I wondered if I should write footnotes for the film (NUTS!) I was in the final stages of completing. Then I wondered if footnotes might be useful to the field of nonfiction cinema more generally. What purposes might such a practice serve?”
Read more | Filmmaker Magazine »
#DocsSoWhite: A Personal Reflection
“More than any other time in my 30-year career as a filmmaker, the documentary world has become intensely stratified. There is a top tier, dominated by wealthy media companies, individuals and foundations, major film festivals and elite film schools. The unspoken secret, which is readily apparent in any credit roll, is the financial and social power—and often celebrity—of the players and backers of films that populate this stratum. And the whiteness. It’s like a cocktail party that most of us didn’t even know about.” – Renne Tajima-Peña
Read more | IDA »
Last Chance U: Is This the Best Sports Documentary Series of All Time?
This Netflix series about the college football players of East Mississippi Community College in the tiny town of Scooba is absolutely gripping – even if the game is a mystery to you. “I do not like American football. I do not understand American football. The college football system is the most bafflingly arcane thing of all time. And yet Last Chance U might be the best sports documentary series I have ever seen.”
Read more | The Guardian »
‘Finding Oscar’ Documents 1982 Guatemala Massacre, Fallout
Ramiro Osorio still has vivid memories of the day that death came to his village of Las Dos Erres over 30 years ago at the height of Guatemala’s decades-long civil war. Now the story of the massacre at Las Dos Erres is being brought to the big screen in Finding Oscar, a documentary executive-produced by Steven Spielberg that premieres this weekend at the Telluride Film Festival in Colorado.
Read more | The New York Times »
Werner Herzog’s ‘Into The Inferno’ Is A Red Hot Return To Form — Telluride Film Festival Review
Every Werner Herzog documentary is ultimately about the same two self-contradictory things: The impermanence of human existence, and the myth of Werner Herzog. The hypnotic, hilarious, and deeply humbling Into the Inferno, a quasi-sequel of sorts to 2007’s “Encounters at the End of the World,” offers a staggering amount of insight into both subjects.
Read more | IndieWire »
A Massive List of Fall 2016 Grants All Filmmakers Should Know About
I need money, you need money, we all need money for our films. Below find all the cash that autumn has to offer. The following grants, labs, and pitch opportunities are organized by deadline from September through early December, and by category for documentaries, narratives and screenwriting. If you’re looking for a head-start on a different granting POV also has a Documentary Film Funding page here.
Read more | No Film School »
Upcoming Festivals and Deadlines
This Week
- Open Call: Tribeca Film Festival Submissions 9/6
- Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) 9/8-18
- Late Deadline: POV Digital Lab in LA and SF 9/9
Next Week
- Deadline: CAAMFest 9/12
- Deadline: IDFA DocLab Academy 9/12
- Deadline: Docs For Sale 9/15
- First Deadline: CPH DOX 2017 9/15
- Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) 9/8-18
- 12th Camden International Film Festival 9/15-18
- IFP Film Week 9/17-22
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